Many times in my articles I am using the metaphor of black-hole to describe the way that anxiety affect our existential state. In this article I want to explain this metaphor since it can be used to visualize what is usually very difficult to say in words, about the anxiety and its affect on our mental life.
There is no need to be an expert in astronomy, neither understanding Einsteinian’s relativity in order to understand this metaphor. All you need is a little bit of imagination.
First let me try to explain in layman words, what is black-hole:
Every body has a gravity. The relations between gravities of bodies in the universe form the spacetime. A black hole, is a region of space from which nothing, including light, can escape. It is the result of the deformation of spacetime caused by a very compact mass. Some stars at the end of their life, collapse under their own gravity and produce black holes. Around a black hole there is an undetectable surface which marks the point of no return, called an event horizon. It is called “black” because it absorbs all the light that hits it, reflecting nothing.
Now, lets see why is this metaphor so great for visualizing anxiety:
- “Body”: the bodies in the universe (e.g. stars) are the ingredients that compose the universe. Lets assume now there are ingredients for our mental life. So our mental life is made of “bodies”.
- “Every body has a gravity”: Each “body” of our mental life has some sort of effect upon other bodies.
- “The relations between gravities of bodies in the universe form the spacetime” : the relations between ingredients of our mental life form our own spacetime – existential state.
- “A black hole, is a region of space from which nothing, including light, can escape”: some regions of our existential state are affected by metaphoric “black hole” that pull anything around into it. Including (and especially) the ‘light” of our life.
- “it is the result of the deformation of spacetime caused by a very compact mass.” : It appears that some ingredient has such a “compact mass” that cause deformation in our existential state. All factors in our life, new ones and old ones, seem to circle around and gravitate into the black hole caused by this body with the tremendous compact mass.
- “Around a black hole there is an undetectable surface”: the compact mass is hidden from us. It lay upon undetectable “surface”. Surface is a formation of ingredients of our mental life with all the relations between them. We are dealing with hidden surface.
- “surface which marks the point of no return, called an event horizon”: the “event horizon” is our symptoms. The behavior that can be inspected from the outside. We do not see body with the compact mass, neither the undetectable surface around it. We only see the side effect of this massive gravity.
- “absorbs all the light that hits it”: any new factor added to our life is absorbed by this black hole. A new friendship, a new job, a career…. Anything become affected.
- “reflecting nothing”: under the effect of the black hole there is lack of mutuality. The “light” that arrive from the ‘other” is absorbed instead of being reflected back and rising up to create some mutual product.
What are those “bodies” that compose our mental life? What are those ingredients that form our internal spacetime by having cross relationships with each other? Please keep tracking my articles to find out. Did you know that mapping a text for finding the network of terms underline the main motive has great similarity with the act of mapping some person’s complaints about a suffer from anxiety, for finding the ingredients that compose this person’s mental state?